Hybrid Alien

My 2012 Little Word: FOCUS

2012-02-11T23:33:00.000Z

For the first time, I have my own One Little Word.
I am not doing Ali Edward's class (maybe next year), not am I going to scrap about it - except for this page, but I'll try to remind myself everyday that if I want to so somewhere I have to focus. And yes, that mean less time in google reader, pinterest, scrapbooking and photo forums... :-)

The journaling says it all:

"OLW. One Little Word. Choosing a word to go by for the year. I read about it in Ali Edwards’ blog a few years ago and thought the concept was interesting but I never had a word. Until some days into 2012 when the word I needed hit me: FOCUS. Focus in life. Focus in photography. Focus in the daily boring tasks. Focus on being a better person. Focus on getting things done. Dear me, don’t get sidetracked. FOCUS!"

60 seconds

2012-02-06T23:40:00.000Z

That's how long it took for him to learn to ride a bike.

1st of January we took my son to the park with the new bike he got from Santa. My son never wanted to try, because he was afraid of falling, never let us remove the training wheels of his older bike. But Santa gave him a brand new bike - only slightly bigger than his old one - without them because he was sure my son was ready. And he was!

* cardstock: Bazzill

* patterned paper: My Mind's Eye

* rubb ons: Chatterbox

* letters stickers: American Crafts

* font: Courier New

* tools: punch - Woodware (circle under the asterisk), tiny attacher.

* other: textured white paper, foam adhesive, scrappy glue

I love that paper, it is spotty and glittery!
I used one of my homemade kits. It is great to use old stuff like the rubbons over the photo as well as my newer stuff.

I scrap slow and use little embellishments so two layouts after, the "kit" still looks intact. Yes, I am aware that at this rate, these two kits will last forever. Scary thought!

Bold cursive fonts

2012-01-27T22:37:00.000Z

One of the reasons I wanted the Silhouette was to cut titles for my scrapbook pages. I compiled a selection of beautiful bold cursive fonts. Apparently cursive does not imply necessary joined up, but that's what I mean by cursive here.

December Summary

2012-01-24T22:26:00.000Z

I mentioned that I had made two "kits" from my existing supplies. The second kit is inspired by this artwork by Michael Kosmicki:

Source: ffffound.com via Elisa on Pinterest

What I like about it is that it as a lot of impact. I tend to avoid pastel colours, but this shows how pastel blue can pack a punch.

This is something else which I like using the same colours:

Source: thedieline.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Noticed the justaposition of drawing and shapes? Plus cream over white?

So here's my kit:

It looks a lot brighter in the photo, but in real life the only strong colours comes from the SEI ticket sheet on the right hand side.

That's my first layout with kit 2:

*Patterned Paper: My Mind's Eye - Lost and Found 2 (dots), Crate Paper - Portrait Collection (green), Studio Calico note (blue and white chain)

*Letter Stickers: Basic Grey - Micro Mono Alpha

*Gems: Kaiser Scrapbook

*other: snowflake die cut, velum, Advantus tiny attacher, foam adhesive

I am happy with this one, but probably only works because of the giant snowflake which I pinched from a Christmas card we got.

Clearing the backlog

2012-01-18T23:38:00.001Z

This was half-finished for weeks, while i was trying to figure out what was missing.

* Digital Elements: Karla Dudley (paper, page protector), Shimelle Laine (November word art), Ali Edwards(quote)

* Mists: Studio Calico

* Pattterned Paper: October Afternoon (yellow), My Mind's Eye(blue)

* Rub-ons:

*Ticket stub: SEI

Finally I decided to add the embellishment of the moment: confetti! But the paper punch was upstair and I was too lazy to get it - I used a much bigger circle punch instead. Also added some faux stitching. The stitching is a old rub-on, love when I find uses for old stash!

The photos are in a digital page protector, when I saw this in Karla Dudley's blog I couldn't resist - I usually don't like digital elements which emulate real-life stuff, but this is very cool!

Trying to grow

2012-01-14T23:27:00.000Z

Maybe I am not trying enough, maybe I am trying to make too many things but lately I hadn't made things that I LOVED. I made things that were OK, that were reasonably happy with but nothing that make my heart sing.

Then I read this in Kelly Purkey's blog:

"In May of this year something went off in my head. Or I should say, was lit under my booty. I sat down at my desk and decided I was sick of making layouts just to get them done. I wanted to push myself create work that would be something that I was really proud of. Not intentionally make layouts that people would love, but make something that I was personally proud of for putting time and energy into. Projects that I felt I was giving my best creative engery to. Do you know what I mean?"

That's it, making things that makes me proud. That's what I want to do this year. I am not claiming I have figured it out how - or that I'll be proud of everything I'll do. But that's what I am aiming for.

I really want to do this using what I have at home instead buying more and more. I looked through copies of inspirational photos, crafts and colour schemes that I had saved (lately I've been using Pinterest for that) and I pulled two that I liked.

Based on them I went through my stash and made two kits.

Kit #1 is based on this photo of an old Crewcut catalog:

Brights against a background of neutrals (black & white). Which is something that always gets my attention. I added a bit of green to the mix, so that I could use it for my Christmas layouts - and I had kit #1.

And that kick started my resolution - I made this layout which made me proud for the first time in a while. It is very simple, no patterned paper, only a few bits from the kit itself. But it is a layout that I like now and I know I'll always like because it is simple and it has something that matters to me (the white paper is a copy of my daughter's letter to Santa - i added the buttons so it can be pulled from the "envelope").

* Cardstock: Bazzill

* Letter Stickers: American Crafts

* Twine: Studio Calico

* Font: Underwood Champion

* Other: Buttons

And you, what you do want to do in creative terms in 2012?

October 2011

2012-01-12T23:56:00.000Z

I seem to have gone through a scrapbooking dry phase, when I hardly scrapped and less still photo photos of my layouts. Hopefully I'll be more prolific this month, this is one I finished a while ago.

* Patterned Paper: Crate Paper

*Stamps/Mist: Studio Calico

*Ink: Stazon

The patterned paper was an old one which I thought it would be suitable for this layout, but it turned out to be a bit too "loud". I managed to subdue it a bit by misting it with white mist.

A new toy

2012-01-11T23:07:00.000Z

My husband got me an eletronic cutting tool; the Silhouette Cameo.

I am still struggling with it as depending on the thickness of the material it needs to be set differently, and I've had occasions where the same settings didn't work for the exactly the same paper.

But when it works it is lots of fun. My first idea is based on Lisa Andersson's card shown here. After a few trial and errors I got the shape more or less right and combined with a snowflake shape which came with the machine to make this card:

TFL!

70 days of Project 365

2012-01-08T23:04:00.000Z

I am so happy that today I have completed 70 days of the Project 365 (photo a day for a year).

Actually I am hoping to do 428 days since in the 1st of January I started the Photo A Day class in Studio Calico. It is great to have a community which supports each other as you can imagine sometimes it is hard to keep it going.

Nicole Samuels, who is teaching the class, introduced us to shuttercal.com and I have uploaded all my pics in the site. I also am uploading in Flickr and am planning to have an album printed at the end of the year, but the beauty of shuttercal is that it is in calendar format.

I haven't posted my album pages for a while and won't bore you with pages and pages - I'll only post this week's compilation.

They're snapshots, not portraits, but it is a start. One of the photos didn't go at all with the others, so I decided not to have it here.

Next week I am shooting food!

Have a nice week, TFL.

Christmas photos and crafts

2011-12-29T23:55:00.000Z

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We had a great Christmas and are still enjoying our break - trying to do something fun everyday.

The children are delighted with their presents and so are the adults. I did buy an early present for me: RadLab, which is a photoshop plugin and very handy to edit photos.My long term aim is to take photos which need little editing, but RadLab is fun to use and can add a little something for an otherwise boring photo.

Take the photo of my son above. He was decorating a small artificial tree which was going to go in his bedroom. That how it looks in real life, taken at night with a flash.

I set the camera in manual mode, exposed for the lights. It looks a little better now.

I then cleaned a bit of the wire and played with RadLab to add a bit of glow to the photo.

I have been crafting and taking photographs, but ironically I haven't taken anIy photos of my crafty projects. I use pinterest to mark interesting things I find in the web; it a great way to have a visual catalog of them. I compiled a few Christmas projects, I'll get some photos taken but in case you want save them for next here, here are the original photos and source:

Source: homemade-gifts-made-easy.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Both are relatively easy to make. The second one would be suitable for an older child. Great way to use paper scraps.

Source: blog.maggiemakes.com via Elisa on Pinterest

This is more time consuming, but the result is beautiful.

Source: alittledelightful.blogspot.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Made with my children and one of their friends. We used cookie cutters to make the shapes and let them colour them with markers. We didn't have much time so I let them colour before baking them. To my surprise the colours remained vivid after baking.

My Memories Suite Winner!!!

2011-12-28T00:40:00.000Z

Back in November I posted a giveaway for My Memories Suite.

Today I finally drew a winner:

The winner is Carol, congratulations!!! Carol, I'll contact you with the details on how to win your prize.

Thanks to all that took part.

September Summary Layout

2011-12-07T23:25:00.000Z

I am glad I finished October's summary layout and have 50% of November done. Here's September's.

I used a sketch by Shimelle Laine.

I really helped me to get the layout done, I find hard to make original multiphoto layouts.

My home still remains mostly undecorated for Christmas, but I put this little cuties up. They're placecards from Next. Now I need something red to complement them, anybody seen a red reindeer somewhere?

Red and White Christmas

2011-12-02T00:58:00.000Z

Do you know when sometimes you get all crafty and bloggy after a long dry spell?

Well, that's me at the moment. I want to use at least a bit of my energy to get started with the Christmas decorations. We didn't do much decoration last year, but I want to put a little bit of effort this year and it is going to be all red and white. Except the tree decorations which will have all the colours of the rainbow as always.

Before December, I always bring down a banner with little booties numbered from 1 to 24 and fill it tiny chocolate pieces for the children, our version of the advent calendar. But it was always a pain to find something small enough to fit 2 in each boot. And when I found it would always be unwrapped do I had to wrap 48 tiny bits of chocolate with tin foil. Boring! This year I decided that for this amount of trouble, I could so something crafty at least. That's what I did:

The circles are from a digi kit to which I added the numbers and punches. The little bags are sandwich bags. The original bags were too big, so I had to cut then into 4 smaller ones. Of course when I cut, I had to glue the bottom and sides again which took a while, but still I enjoyed making them.

And the photo is an entry for project 365.

An Apple a Day

2011-11-30T23:22:00.003Z

I am behind in posting, I am in the 5th week of project 365. Here is week 3, I haven't compiled week 4 yet.

In week 3 I decided to have a theme, which was a good idea, but I was a bit too narrow on the theme: Apples!

By the last day, I had run out of ideas. And time, as I left the photo taking for the last minutes of the day.

I love punches!!!

2011-11-29T23:59:00.000Z

My love affair with punches started slowly, but now I have a sizeable collection. I counted them just now and if I include the tiny ones, there are 26 punches in my collection. Excluding a few mistakes (impulse buys) and one or two which are not good quality, I use them all, they're the a scrapbooker best friend.

All this to show you a layout which I made a while ago but never posted.

It is still on my wall, one of my favourite layouts of all times.
Another favourite tools/supplies in the layout:
White mist by Studio Calico.
Twine
Martha Stewart Score Board (used to make a grid pattern on the cardstock).

Project 365

2011-11-20T23:07:00.000Z

First of all, a shout: GRÁ, thanks for the comments, could you please email me with your address at elisamayn at yahoo dot com.

As if I didn't have enough things to catch up I started project 365. Which is to take a photo everyday for a whole year. This is an attempt to take my photography to the next level as I feel I didn't improve at all in the last 2 to 3 years.

To make it feel more manageable, I am thinking in weekly chunks, somehow taking a photo a day for a week (for 52 weeks) doesn't seem as daunting.

I just finished my 3rd week but I haven't uploaded all the photos yet, here are my first 2 weeks.

Two days to get used to the whole idea, 29/10 to 30/10

First week 30/10 to 06/11, some taken at home, some taken in Westport. Photos were really boring so I inverted the colours of a couple of images and run an action in another. Cheating I know. 2 Chandeliers, 2 ceiling lights.

Week 2 07/11 to 13/11. I had the worst flu in years but still managed to take a photo a day. Last one is my son's bike in the porch seen from indoors.

Back into Craftland and freebie giveaway continued.

2011-11-19T23:05:00.000Z

A couple posts ago I offered some Halloween scrapbooking stash, and the winner :-) is Grá, I didn't have to have a draw for this one. Grá, please contact me at elisamayn at yahoo dot com with your address so I can post you the stash!

My another giveway is My Memories Suite which I posted here. It is a fabulous prize and I'll wait a little bit more to announce the winner. Put a comment in the original post to have a chance!

Here's another digi I made with My Memories Suite, using a ready made template, I only changed the title of the layout. It traces the change in my daughter's outfit from the last 3 Halloween nights. She wanted to be scary and she chose her outfit; a vampire; and I let her do her own make up. I have to admit it was a little bit too creepy for me, but she was happy.

As for paper and glue, I am also making some Christmas stuff, some cards like this one:

I'll post my remaining cards in my other blog next week.

Have a great weekend!

Digital Scrapbooking Software Giveaway!!!

2011-11-06T01:20:00.001Z

Happy Digital Scrapbooking Day!

I have a great and fitting giveaway for Digital Scrapbooking Day; a fabulous sofware called My Memories Suite!

A few weeks ago, I was asked to review it and give a copy to one of my readers. As a hybrid scrapper; that is one that like to use digital elements to real life pages; I jumped at the opportunity.

My background is in IT, so I think that sofware should be easy to use so I just started using as soon as I installed it. I was amazed on how easy it is was to create a whole album from scratch. There are tons of templates; with styles to suit all tastes.

My own style veers towards clean and simple; so I choose one of the simplest ones - but there are lots of quirk and colourful ones too. One that caught my eye was the baby one; I think I might have to make one for a friend who had a baby girl recently.

One thing that My Memories Suite have to accomplished is to have ways to create an album very quickly while at the same time allowing you to have as much control as you want. In one hand you can create a 30+ page album in one step and upload all your photos in another step. Or alternatively; you can pick each page style one by one; or even create your own style. And choose which photos go where by using the drag and drop.

Because I didn't read the online manual it took me a while to find out how modify each photo (eventually most of the things I wanted were in crop and effect tools). Under effects I found a few basic tools like making the photo lighter; darker; black&white; etc. Crop allowed me to move a photo within the frame. The think I missed was how to resize the photo while keeping the frame intact.

There are a number of background papers, embellishments to choose from, as well as a big array of text effects available. However, since I already have a great amount of digital papers and elements, I wanted to know if I could use them. The answers was YES. There's probably other ways to do it, but the easiest I could find was to upload them as photos.

This is a quick album I created this evening - I used a pre-designed album in My Memories Suite and used the option to add the photos automatically. My only design choice was to add a few doodles and word art by Karla Dudley which I had already in my laptop. And then I exported in movie format which I am sharing with you. Easy peasy!

There's more cool features which I didn't review here, like the ways you can make your album interactive. I think an album in a DVD would make a great Christmas present for the family. I am envisaging adding a Christmas message from my children to their grandparents. Maybe I could record them singing a Christmas carol and add it to the album too?

This is my evaluation of the software:

PROS: This is a great software to make an album with interactive features or a quick traditional album to be shared online or to be printed.
It is easy to use and flexible.

CONS: Not many, but it is bulky and takes a while to install and to run the first time. Some features, like ordering a calendar are only available to US and Canada customers.

I am pleased to say I was given a Share the Memories code that provides a $10 discount off the purchase of the My Memories Suite Scrapbook software and a $10 coupon for the MyMemories.com store - $20 value!). The code is STMMMS32678.

My Memories website also has digital scrapbooking kits, which of course can be used on its own or with My Memories Suite. If you'd like to put your name in the hat for a chance to win My Memories Suite; leave a comment telling me which is your favourite Christmas kit from My Memories.

A Little Halloween Treat

2011-10-31T00:12:00.001Z

Happy Halloween!!!!

I have a few bits and pieces of Doodlebug's Spook Town collection to give away.

If you are interested, please leave a comment here and I'll get a name out of a hat next Sunday.

And come back, as I'll have a very exciting giveaway soon ;-)

Looking for inspiration

2011-10-17T23:09:00.000+01:00

I am guilty on saving pages of magazines, bookmarking, pinteresting lots of inspirational ideas and not using them effectively.

To combat this, sometimes I am deliberately using a sketch, photo or a design as the starting point for a layout. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Michelle La Grue found this sketch by Becky Fleck:

I strayed from the sketch, but still you can see where I found the inspiration:

And this cute shoe (by JoyFolie) I found in Pinterest:

Source: joyfolieblog.com via Elisa on Pinterest

what the inspiration for this layout:

I used everything this time, the colour palette, the stripes, the orange and white round shapes.

A quick mini book

2011-10-05T23:48:00.000+01:00

Last month I posted a flag book. The spine of the flag book is a concertina to which you attach paper strips and it got me thinking that I could make a mini book that way. I was almost sure that I had seen something like that before but couldn't find the source.

After I finished mine, I saw a beautiful one by Michelle La Grue, but you have to take my word for it, I took a quick look and can't see it in her blog.

Summer last year I took the kids to the city centre to buy a tweed cap for my Dad (more of it later). Since we had the whole day, I decided to bring them to visit the National Gallery, the National History Museum, with a stop for lunch in the Kilkenny Design Centre and some fun in the ]Merrion Square playground.

Of course I took my camera and I planned a mini album based on the trip. It was all the be designed digitally and printed in 6x4 photo paper. One thing about me though, it that I loose steam pretty quickly. If I don't finish something say a week or so, I get bored and start to do something else. Which is what happened.

Last month, I was sorting out my stuff when I came across the printed pages. Then I remembered the idea to make a concertina-based (must find out the proper name for it) mini book and it all came together quickly.

The cover is acetate - I stuck the title there. The spine is held together with Studio Calico fabrips and coloured bias tape (by Lily). The page that you can see through was done digitally; the photo, the border, the background and the sellotape are all digital elements put together in PSE.

And there some of the pages:

I can't resist a colourful wall. And colourful umbrellas.

Mosaic floor in the National Gallery

My son modelling the cap.

The journaling is too small to read and way too long also so I'll give you the short version:

My Dad asked me to buy him a tweed cap for him. I told him it was made of wool and unsuitable for where he lives (Brazil). He insisted it was made of cotton because he read it somewhere that it was cotton. No, he wouldn't trust his daughter who lives in Ireland nor his son-in-law who is Irish. So eventually I bought him a tweed cap knowing very well that it would never be used.

*Patterned Paper: scraps from Basic Grey, 7gypsies and October Afternoon among others.
*Digital elements: You are here by Paislee Press and Queen of Quirk, among others.
*Other: Studio Calico Fabrips, bias tape

Digital layout

2011-09-25T23:33:00.000+01:00

This is something I have meaning to do for ages, a photo collage. It's been in the back of my mind since I saw a digital template by Paislee Press a while ago. Then there was this amazing layout by Susan Weinroth.

Finally, after a few false starts, I decided to spend a couple of nights selecting the photos and then adding to the template. They are all photos of my two kiddies taken in 2010 and they are the opening for that year in my project 12 album.

Thank you Liz Tamanaha (a.k.a. Paislee Press). Without her freebie I don't think I would have ever finished this project. Can you imagine resizing and cutting 74 tiny photos?!

I printed the template 10x10 and stuck it into patterned paper but with hindsight I should have done all digitally, I love this zigzag paper which belongs to the same kit as the butterflies.

* Digital Template: Press Plate No. 25 by Paislee Press @ Oscraps.com
* Photoshop actions: Falling for b&w by My Four Hens
* Background paper (resized), butterfly and word art: Twenty Twenty by Karla Dudley @ Design House Digital
* Font: Century Gothic

A Flag Book

2011-09-07T23:49:00.000+01:00

I've been meaning to try to make a flag book for ages - first I thought it was too difficult, until I read a tutorial and discovered that the making wasn't hard, it was more a matter of deciding what to put inside to make an impact. A bit like making a never ending card.

Finally I decided to bite the bullet and make a test one. I could have crafted it a little bit better but it didn't work out that bad, but definitely the image choice - a photo I took in Rio and photoshopped - lacked impact.

Since it was my brother's birthday yesterday and I sent it to him last week instead of a proper birthday card, so it wasn't totally useless.

The cover - I am happy with it; it's a family photo that my husband took.

Inside, the flag book itself:

The back:

The "spine" of the book is a concertina to which you attach paper strips; when you open the book and pull the concertina, the paper strips overlap creating a moisac-like image with repeating patterns.

If you do try to make one, choose your image carefully, mine was pretty but boring with too much white space and lacking a strong focal point.

I am definitely going to have another go, but next time, instead of a photo, I'll use random bits of paper.

Trying new food

2011-08-29T23:32:00.000+01:00

While I haven't been completely idle as far as idle as craft is concerned, I haven't taken any photos of what I have managed so far. So I'll change the subject. To food.

Sometime ago I set a goal to try to make a new dish every week.

Why? Because I had fallen into the routine of cooking the same dozen or so dishes that everybody at home liked. Specially after my number two turned out to be a very fussy eater. Or else, cooking something for my husband and I and popping chicken nuggets and chips in the oven for the kids.

I have kept the goal - with a little bit of cheating - but I can't remember exactly what I made and when I made, so my next project is to have a folder with the recipes printed so I can go back to the ones that were sucessful.

The recipes I found in the internet I saved in Pinterest so I can list here, click on the link for a comment and a link the original post/recipe:

Source: skinnytaste.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Source: pink-parsley.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Source: skinnytaste.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Source: jamieoliver.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Source: blogs.babble.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Back from holidays

2011-08-17T00:03:00.000+01:00

We had a great time in Brazil, we spent two weeks with my family and I managed squeeze a visit to a beautiful baby girl who was recently adopted by friends of ours. I haven't created much since we arrived on Saturday but I am going to share a couple of layouts I finished a while ago but haven't posted yet.

I had an idea of creating a background with the numbers stamps; it didn't quite work as I had envisaged, I might try it again. I found a use for my Promarkers - to make borders around my layout. With a ruler and the thicker end of the markers it can be done easily.

And this is the may 2011 layout; this was one layout which wasn't going to have a birder. Until I discovered that I had previous cut a strip of the patterned paper for something else. I was inspired by something I saw in Living Etc for this layout.
Something was missing so I dig the "remember this moment" stamp and stamped twice diagonally. Somehow it made the whole thing look better.

I was totally surprised and honoured when Nicole Mullen asked me if I wanted to be featured in the 3rd issue of Crafting Ireland. Thank you!

Yipee! Fabulous news!!!

2011-08-08T22:00:00.000+01:00

Take a peek at the Crafting Ireland blog!

Sock Monsters

2011-07-25T01:16:00.000+01:00

Before the summer holidays started I sat down with my daughter and asked her to make a list of things she wanted to do while she was off school, I did the same and later I asked the same from my husband and son. It was going well during the first two weeks but then my son got sick, nothing serious but enough to stop outings, playdates, cinema and such things.

What was left was craft - I make sure my list had enough of them. This week the only thing we made was sock "monsters", using unpaired socks and the ones the children had grown out of.

I looked at some tutorials like this one for a cute owl and armed with enough knowledge made one of my own. It was meant first to be a owl too, but when I stuffed it looked more like a cat so I quickly changed plans.

Then it was time to get the children to make their own. My 9 year old daughter made with my supervision while I helped my son to make his, he choose the eyes and nose and I helped him glue them. I was using a glue gun so I didn't want any accidents.

It had a simple design, a bit like the one shown above, I took a photo of both of their work but accidentally deleted it. Later, when they saw my second attempt, they asked me to put arms, legs and tail on theirs. This is my son's.

The original pair of socks was one I bought in winter and they were nice and fluffy, perfect for this project.

This is the second one I made, using the remaining of the pair.

one about the girl, one about the boy

2011-07-06T22:45:00.000+01:00

I don't much use youtube, but definitely it has its use. My daughter wanted her hair braided into french plaits. Which I didn't know how to. After watching a couple of tutorial in youtube, I managed to have her hair done.

This one is missing the title - I meant to superimpose "Tiddler" over "thing" on the die cut but didn't come round to do it.

The journaling says:

"Because you like to tell tales, I bought you a book about a little fish called Tiddler who always told tall lates. I think it backfired on me because you saw it as an encouragement.You told your teacher that I met President Obama when he visited Ireland.
You didn't think you'd get caught but you were.
Don't tell tales, Luke!"

I love it, not because of the design, but because it records something about my son, a historical event and also has my son's handwriting on it, I copied his school work and added to the layout. Sadly his grammar is not the best and I didn't think of asking him what he meant to wrote."

Two layouts, finally!

2011-06-29T23:38:00.000+01:00

Only now that I uploaded these two I noticed how similar they are - kraft paper background with white mist. Same letter stickers in the title and the colours on the papers more or less the same.

The first one is about my daughter and a friend. She's the daughter of friends of ours and only met twice but they bonded over a shared liking of Dr. Who. We stayed with them in London and I was amazed on how well they got along. Of course, at some stage, they had to sit in the sofa and watch Dr. Who.

The next one is my April summary layout. I started with some chipboard leftovers. They came from a game we got for our children and once we removed smalls square chips for the game, we were left with this little pretty windows which I used in this layout.

Food

2011-06-26T23:05:00.000+01:00

I should add a mid-year resolution to my new year ones. Take photos of "mission accomplished" tasks.

Last week I made a oven baked risotto. I had it first at a friend's house and it is so much easier than the traditional method. I googled and found this recipe. The photo is by MollyMesnik too.

I made a couple of mistakes. One, I let it bake for too long so it was a bit too soggy, two, I didn't have enough parmesan cheese so it tasted a bit bland. I'll definitely try it again (halving the ingredients).

New Year's Resolutions, 6 months on...

2011-06-15T00:21:00.000+01:00

The problem with New Year's Resolutions is that, after a month or so, I forget about them. Honestly, at this point I don't even remember all of them.

So I came up with this cunning plan to shame me to stick to them. After all, it is only June, I still have more than 6 months to get some results. Maybe if make a plan to blog weekly about my progress (or lack of) it will help me to keep focused?

I'll list my resolutions as I get them started again.

Resolution 1 - Meals: Every week try to cook something new. It doesn't have to be anything big, a side dish, a dessert is fine.

I got a subscription to Easy Food with my Tesco vouchers and I've tried a few recipes from that. Now I started to save interesting recipes I find online with Pinterest, that way, I can keep track of I want to try and write down if I liked it or not afterwards.

Today I tried Hasselback Potatoes, Donal Skehan's version. It was a bit dry, but rereading it, I made a mistake and didn't melt the butter. I'll make it again.

This is a foto from Donal's blog, mine didn't turn out as pretty, but nice enough.

Resolution 2 - Home and Garden. Let's say they're not looking good. Prunning, cleaning, weeding in the garden. Home needs decluttering, repainting. And lots of imagination, it is so bland.

My husband got a multiple picture frame like this one for this birthday in February. It is a tricky one because you need lots of photos that go well together. I printed some photos but didn't like the final result then had a brainwave and went for mirrors instead.

It is temporarily sitting on top of my mantelpiece.

Tooth, Apple, Fairy

2011-06-11T23:32:00.000+01:00

Last September, a few weeks after my son started school, he lost his first tooth. Finally I got to scrap it.

The apples in the layout are not random, they have something to do with the story.

The journaling says

"Once upon a time there was a boy with a wobbly tooth.
One day, his mum gave him an shiny red apple.
The boy ate the apple.
Then he said ouch, I’am bleeding in my mouth!
Turned out the tooth had gone and it was never found.
But the tooth fairy left him a few coins under his pillow anyway.

THE END "

My little reader and March Summary

2011-05-27T13:38:00.000+01:00

She loved that we read stories to her every night before going to bed. Since both her parents love to read too, I assumed that as soon as she became a proficient reader, she'd read books too.

But it wasn't the case, we'd buy books for her, go to the library with her. And occasionally, if we insisted, she'd read a book. One of the thin, silly ones, about fairies and the likes. It drove me insane, how could a girl with a pile of books to read say she was bored and had nothing to do? Surely, you have a BOOK??!!!

Then I found some books I thought she'd like, her goodmother gave her one. And she liked them. Then I bought her a book, the first from a series, to bring with her for our Easter break. She devoured it and we had to go to a bookshop to get the next one from the series. She finished it in one evening so the following day my husband got more 3. During the 5 day break she finished the whole series but one which we couldn't find .

Going from one extreme to the other in a matter of months.

March's summary layout - I misted the border, I seem to be in a border phase. I think all of my recent layouts have a border, even if it is only implied like the one above, where I left a thin white border around the whole layout.

The pen sketched grid is a digi by Ali Edwards - very simple, one of the things I like about Ali Edwards is that most of what she does are simple and anyone could easily replicate (apart from her fabulous handwriting) but she has an eye to put things together that makes them special and original. I haven't put the list of supplies because I've been lazy, but Ali's digi is available at Designer Digitals.

Have a good weekend!

Numbers!

2011-05-17T22:26:00.001+01:00

When he started school in September, he discovered an interest for numbers. On occasions he'd actually ask for "sums", that is, easy addition and subtraction questions. And he says his favourite number is 199. He thinks it is hilarious to start counting 1, 2, 3.. and then to drop 199 in the middle of it. I am not implying that he is gifted or anything like that, just that he likes numbers. And that's cool.

Also cool is that 199 is a prime number.

Done for a Studio Calico challenge.

Jump!

2011-05-11T00:07:00.000+01:00

The title should have an exclamation mark, but when I tried to add it to the "p" it looked awkward. For an Studio Calico challenge.

Decomissioned photos

2011-05-07T00:00:00.001+01:00

This two photos were hanging on a wall at home for ages and finally got around replacing them for more recent photos of my children. But I couldn't throw them away.

One of my favourite photos of all times, it is the first time I scrapped the same photo twice.

And my son's photo. My husband can't understand why I like this one so much. I know is mouth looks funny but the mischievous look in his eyes are so him.

TFL and have a good weekend!

Best Mates

2011-05-03T23:12:00.000+01:00

My son and his best friend. I remember my daughter and her best friend at the same age; they fought almost as much as they played and I always felt like UN personnel in a peace keeping mission. Not those two, they hardly argue and they never had a fight. And if they don't agree, they seem to find a way around the problem without having to require my diplomatic interference... :-)

Birthday Layout and a digi freebie

2011-05-02T01:52:00.000+01:00

My little girl was 9 in February. This year she went for a small party, only a few friends over for a DVD, popcorn and pizza - she loved every minute of it. I was in a complete non-photographic mood on the day, so I used a photo taken a couple of days after.

* Patterned paper, mist and buttons: Studio Calico
* Pen: Uniball signo
* Font: Century Gothic (journaling)

While I love experimenting, I still find that when I look back at the old layouts, the ones I still love are the simple ones. Like this one. The only thing I am not sure about it is if it suitable for a birthday layout of a 9-year-old. It might be a bit .. how do I say ... not girly enough, maybe?

Now I have a great idea for a girly page, which I might try for something else. I wish I had thought of it when I was doing this page.

Now a complete change of subject. If you have this punch - Photo labels large punch by EK Success - you might be interested in what I have to offer:

The "large" is a bit misleading, the punch is big but not the labels. Anyway, the labels always looked a bit bare when punched them into plain paper, I was always wishing for a border around. Studio Calico has suitable stamps, but I am a lousy stamper, so I thought I'll make a digi with all of them in the same position as the punch so I can print and them punch the 3 labels together. Easy, right?

No so, at least for me, it took ages to get the shapes right and then to position in the same way as the punch. (Yes, I punched and scanned the "left over", but still it took ages). To spare someone the same grief I'm sharing my labels here.

and in blue:

Click on the image to increase it, then save it. Print it and trim the paper on the printed line so you can align it easily with the punch. It's not perfect but good enough.

I just realised now you'd like to see how it look once punched, so I quickly scanned this:

Mess on my desk challenge

2011-04-20T00:13:00.000+01:00

Sasha Farina inspired by Donna posted the following challenge in the Studio Calico forum:

"Scrap a layout with the mess on your desk.
Just grab whatever is on your desk and try to create a layout! That is all. Go to town and have fun, that's all I ask. "

I was in the process of tidying up my stuff, so the table was for once empty, but I had piles of scrap in the floor. I was sorting out the papers to make mini cardmaking kits for me.

That was my floor:

I decided for the stuff on the right, blue/orange/greens plus the blue strip of paper in the middle.

Then I went looking for a suitable photo in my box of unused photo, and I found one take a few years ago, with my children and their friends close to the beach. While the 4 kids sitting in a row look very cute, I didn't care much for the busy background, so it never got scrapped. Until now.

Everything in the layout is from the floor mess, except the white cardstock and the "great fun" chipboard. I loved the final result - I'm so glad I took the challenge!

February summary and my funny guy

2011-04-13T23:45:00.000+01:00

February summary, I made the whole layout on white cardstock with green mist. Didn't like it at all, stared at it for ages, replaced the white with kraft and it look much better. Still, something was missing, so I made a border with a white pen. I think I am now hooked with white borders.

The semi-transparent, long strips are from a washi tape. 3 postcards and a few washi tapes - that was all my purchases in Thailand. Very useful for an indecisive scrapper like me, because they stay where you put them but at the same time, they peel off without causing any damage.

And here's where the original background went:

“Luke, this is a wishing stone. If you put your hands on it, close your eyes and
make a wish, your wish will come true.”
“Really?”
“That’s what it says here, do you want to have a go?”
“Yessss.”
He puts both hands on the stone, closes his eyes and makes a wish.
“Done! Can you buy me a toy now?”
“No.”
“Oh, nooo! It didn’t work!”

Phuket - part 2

2011-04-04T22:28:00.000+01:00

I wanted this mini book to have as many photos as possible, as well as hold the postcards, airplane tickets, coins and brochures we got in Thailand. It is 90% finished. Ironically, one item missing is the first thing I did towards making this mini book. On the last day of our trip, sitting in a restaurant, I asked my husband and children what were the highlights of the trip in their opinions. We all wrote our answers in a napkin and I stashed it in my knapsack; can't find if now!

The cover is a postcard; it had to go sideways because I didn't want to trim it. I wish I could draw like that! The girl is from a brochure for a butterfly garden we visited.

Opening page, with a pocket with some arline tickets.

The hotel, map of the island.

The pool. Gorgeous!

One of my son's favourite memories; riding on an elephant.

The colours. The flowers.

My top 3 highlights.

The back is another postcard.

* Patterned Paper: My Mind's Eye and paper scraps
* Album: Linda Kelly
* Letter stickers: Basic Grey
* Digital notepaper: Paislee Press

Phuket - part 1

2011-03-31T00:16:00.000+01:00

This month - through my husband's work - we had an incredible opportunity: to go to Thailand. So off we went, left on a Sunday, flew back on the next Sunday. 3 planes each way, 7 hours time difference, jet lag that kept us awake when we should be sleeping and sleepy when we should be enjoying ourselves. And it was worth it, the holiday of a lifetime.

Parties, tours, an amazing hotel, everything was taken care of and we only had to decide what we wanted to do. If we left to the children, we would have spend every minute either in the beach or in the most beautiful swimming pool I'd ever seen. But we managed to squeeze a bit of sightseeing too.

I still have to take a photo of the album I made, but here's a separate scrapbooking page I made, about one of our favourite memories, lighting lanterns on the beach. Hundreds in the air, an amazing sight!

* Cardstock: Bazzill
* Patterned Paper: Basic Grey
* Mist: Studio Calico
* Pen: Uniball Signo
*Punch: Fiskars
*Other: sequins
*Photo by Markus Perkins Photography

The children got souvenirs for their friends, little doll keyrings for the girls, wooden elephant keyrings for the boys. There were a few doll keyrings left and that was I did with them:

Sadly I didn't bring anything written in Thai, the only thing in Thai I had was a litle leaflet I got in the airport, and I used it for the background.
The frame is from IKEA.

Isn't good when...

2011-03-29T23:21:00.000+01:00

...when you manage to combine a few good things in one single project?

Like helping to organise her stuff, use old photographs and also contributing a little bit to an appeal? And everything done very quickly?

Well, I was doing my regular tidying-my-children's-bedroom, mumbling why can't they be more tidy, bla bla bla, when it ocurred to me that my daughter usually keeps her bedroom very tidy,that is her bed, the floor and her desk. It is inside the wardrobe that is the problem. So, maybe if I put some labels on where to put what, it would help her to know where things go?

I wanted something pretty - that's when I remembered something I saw in this appeal. I'd bought the quotes kit initially, but now I thought I needed the frames:

And with that, I went to my box of unused photos (test photos, surplus photos that didn't make to the album) and found a few of my daughter's.
I resized the frame to fit the photos, labelled them and printed them out. Then cut around and inside them, put the photos inside, added a bit of cardboard to the back to make it sturdy. And they're done!

I've attached magnetic strips on the back - the ones that were to label tin boxes. And just glued the one that were to label plastic boxes.

As my son would say, easy peasy lemon squeezy!

My daughter's first communion and Sept 2010 summary

2011-02-24T23:04:00.000Z

I had already made a layout about my daughter's First Communion. That time I had used a photo that I had taken. The second version uses the official photography, which is no doubt much better technically and also a much better composed photography. But I thought it was too formal for my scrapbooking style.

But finally I decided to used it - adding a bit of vintage-style to my normal page...

* Cardstock: Bazzill
* Die cut: Ki Memories
* Frame: Sassafras (white)
* Flower: Prima Marketing
* Butterflies: Making Memories
* Ribbon: Prima Marketing (from packaging)
* Pearls: Kaiser
* Also: blue frame, date stamp, tissue paper

Since I don't do vintage, I had to adapt my existing stash to suit. Both the lacy die cut and the frame are back to front. The die cut is pink on the right side and the frame has a wood pattern. The blue are flower petals that I took apart and the ribbon was stolen from its original packaging.

And here's my September 2010 summary.

* Cardstock: Bazzill
*Patterned Paper: Studio Calico
*Border Sticker: Crate Paper
*Journaling Tag: Paislee Press and One Little Bird

A significant birthday and January 2011 summary

2011-02-16T22:35:00.000Z

My husband's birthday was last week. We celebrated twice - on the day with the children and my mother in law. Saturday, my husband invited a few of our friends to one of our favourite restaurants. Great food, even better company and no washing up. Perfect!

I am so late with Project 12 that I decided to skip a few months get straight into January 2011. The idea of Project 12 is simple, one scrapbook page (or double page), per month. Davinie Fiero started on her blog and brought the idea with her to Scrapbook & Cards Today. There's sketch that you might use or not. I really liked the January sketch and thought it would fit the photos I wanted to use.

*Patterned Paper: Basic Grey (map) Making Memories (text), Studio Calico (city name circles)
*Stickers: Making Memories (journaling tag), Jenni Bowlin Studios (letters)
*Ink: Colorbox
*Mist: Studio Calico
*Font: Underwood Champion
*Other: Thread

This is the original sketch, by Becky Fleck, as seen in the original post:

I squeezed the original two pages into a single one - I am surprised how well it worked.

Between our holidays and my husband business trips, there were a lot of travel last month. Rio, Miami and Madrid. I went looking for a Studio Calico paper scrap with city names and discovered that both Rio and Madrid were feature, as well as our city of Dublin. It left me wondering if Miami was originally there. Anyway, I settled for Paris - we were technically there, was it was a stop over on our flight to Brazil.
TFL!

My girl - her dress and the snow

2011-02-11T20:38:00.000Z

It's over a year since I promissed my daughter that she could get her Irish Dancing dress. We asked her teacher, but she was unable to get a good second hand one her size, but finally the time came last year. It was a bit bitter sweet. Sweet because she got to wear it for the first time when her friends also got theirs. Bitter because she's having a break from Irish dancing after almost 5 year.

It wasn't her choice, it was mine. I felt that she was under pressure, between school, flu, playdates and the likes and decided that a break from extra-school activities would be good for her. But I am sure she'll go back after a while.

It is busy layout for a simple scrapper like me, but I think it suits the theme.

I wanted 3 standard size (6x4) photos in a 8.5x11 format - I layered the photos so that you can see there's more photos.

*Patterned Paper: Studio Calico (red), Sassafras (cream/yellow), Making Memories (stripes)

*Sticker: Crate Paper (lacy border), Jenni Bowlin(letters)

*Stamps: Studio Calico

*Ink: Colorbox

*Font: Little Days

The next one is my DT entry for Shimelle digital kits in 2peas.

* Digital Template: Pretty Paper Basics by Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket
* Font: Stencil and Adler

Liebster Blog award

2011-02-09T22:45:00.000Z

Jackie is one of the most creative cardmakers I know, besides being a truly generous and charming person. She awarded me this:

The idea behind this award is to give it to people whose talent you admire but feel they do not get the recognition they deserve,

so please do not award this to anyone with say 1,000 followers.

If you have been TAGGED and would like to take part, all you have to do is post the blog award above on your blog and link the person who gave you the award ( also let them know you are accepting the award by posting on their blog ).

Then you can choose 3-5 people who you think deserve the award and post their name and blog links on your blog.

Here's my choice:

Wendy http://wendymade.blogspot.com/

Trinh http://cardediem.com/

Khalinne http://lesrecresdekhalinne.blogspot.com/

Sabrina http://mymiscellany-cook22.blogspot.com/

Mandy http://crafty-angel.blogspot.com/

Go and check them blogs, they're beautiful!

Thanks Jackie, you made my day!

Star Reader and December summary

2011-02-02T23:49:00.001Z

My son always loved books and now he's starting to read by himself. I knew he'd learn fast, because he showed an interest in the written words very early.

He loves Mr. Men books, so I got him a Christmas themed one in a booksale at my children's school. And one weekend morning, just before Christmas, he woke up, sat in our bed and started diligently reading the book. Slowing, getting some words right, struggling with others. And how cool it is, he was wearing Mr Men PJ!

While I sometimes make busier and "lumpier" layouts, the simple ones are the ones that I like most. Like this one.

I stitched at the top and bottom of the photo, it is hard so see in the photo, but it added a little something to the layout.

*Patterned paper: Making Memories
*Letter stickers: Sassafras (yellow), October Afternoon (small/cream)
*Chipboard: Heidi Swapp
*Journaling tag: Ali Edwards @ Designer Digitals
*Font: Underwood Champion

Recently Dulce Silva, another Brazilian expat, posted this layout in the Studio Calico gallery. I was amazed how similar it is with the layout above. They both are 8.5x11, with a large photo going all the width of the layout, papers strips at the top & bottom and 3 stars.

And Project 12/ December 2010. I really don't want to give in this project - i have to get my act together, I am missing 3 months in 2010...

A photo-less layout. Copied the idea from something that Ali Edwards make a few Christmas ago. It's a way to keep some of the Christmas cards. The little drawings on top of the December label are by my kiddies - their contribution for their respective classes' Christmas card.

Break for cards

2011-01-29T03:21:00.001Z

Even though I still have a 2010 layout to share, I thought I'd post some cards for a chanhe. I went through my paper scraps and made 4 mini-kits out of them. I figure I'd be able to get one or two cards using each kit
.

As I started, I'd worked out a few "rules" for the cards:

1. Try to use mostly the papers in the pack.
2. You can look for more papers if needed, but it has to be from the scrap box.
3. You're allowed to use embellishments, stamps, punches from your stash.
4. Continue until you finish everything from the kit.

Can you believe I got 7 cards out of it?! Ok, they're not brilliant - I am no stamper, I am lazy about colouring and my cards won't get any prizes, but still...

I digitally coloured one of my images then added a bit of stickles on the bubbles.

Another one using the same coloured image:

One of my favourites.

I wanted to make at least one girlie card, so I added the red cardstock and the flowers.

Something a little different:

That's 6 cards, the last one need the final touches...

Christmas and Project 12

2011-01-23T21:52:00.000Z

We were all disappointed that we wouldn't be able to get to Rio for Christmas. So were my parents and brother who were waiting for us. My daughter was probably the one that took the news the hardest. But Christmas at home wasn't bad after all and we got to Rio eventually.

Project 12 - still in Agust 2010... Sigh...

Clearing the backlog

2011-01-20T22:58:00.001Z

I still have some 2010 layouts to share, here's one:

*Cardstock: Bazzill
*Patterned Paper: Studio Calico (stripes), Jenni Bowlin (cream), Crate Paper (other)
*Flower brad: Making Memories
*Mist: Studio Calico
*Font: Underwood Champion
*Letter stickers: Making Memories

The design is from a challenge in the Studio Calico blog, set by Kimberly Neddo. Basically what you had to do was to make a sketch based on a SC ad, and use it to make a scrapbook page.

When I went scouring for these ads, I found two that came out at the same time and looked good together:

My two children are great friends with M's 3 children. The middle child, a girl, has decided unilaterally that she's my son's girlfriend. Although she's year younger than him, she's taller and stronger and whenever she wants to, she lifts my son and give him a peck in the cheek. Which annoys him no end. :-)

One day she, my son, and her younger brother were watching TV on her house and my son was growing a bit unconfortable with all the displays of affection from the two. My friend thought it was hilarious and took some photos on her phone. She was kind enough to send the photos to me, I had to scrap them.

Surprised?

2011-01-10T23:47:00.001Z

When my daughter came along, I used to read these child-development books, and was happy that she was reaching all the milestones. Actually, she was reaching them way before it was expected. When my son came along, I'd grown tired of checking, telling myself that as long as he was developing, on his own pace, it was OK. But I couldn't help noticing the difference. Like no interest in Lego, toys or games. Unless it involved electronics. Anything with buttons, he loved. Or TV. If I let him choose, he'd rather watch TV than go to the playground. Seriously!

(I don't mean I thought he had developmental problem or other serious issues.)

He started school last September, and I remember joking with my husband that we should start a petition to add "nintendo playing" as a subject in school as it was the only think he'd be interested in doing that involved manual dexterity.

I knew he would be good at reading, but besides that, I was bit worried.

I shouldn't have. He surprised me big time.

*Patterned Paper: Making Memories (stripes), Basic Grey (all other)
*Stamps: Studio Calico
*Butterfly: Making Memories
*Font: Calibri Regular
*Punch: Woodware
*Ink: Colorbox
* Embossing Powder: Stampendous

Journaling:

Surprised? Me?

Surprised that you now diligently write your A,B,Cs?

That you walk to school asking me "Does 8 and 2 makes 10? And 4 plus 4 is 8?" That you walk back from school asking me if I knew about caterpillars and butterflies?

That you left a voice mail to Daddy reciting all the months of the year?

If I tell you that you never had any interest in Lego nor building blocks. That you took forever to learn how to play Snap. That you refused to draw or write in preschool. If I tell you that you took so long to learn your colours that I was convinced that you were colour blind, you'd understand. I am surprised. Pleasantly so. Over the moon so.

PS: I always knew you had brains. What I was afraid was that you'd be too laid back to use them.

That was back in October. He's reading now...

I'm back and I didn't even go yet...

2010-12-26T17:19:00.000Z

Long story, we're supposed to travel last Thursday went to the airport but had to return home due to the weather. We're hoping to travel on the 28th. In the meantime I am recovering from a flu and my son from an infection.

So we'll probably just vegetate and recover for these two days. And maybe scrapbook a little.

I got a nice "Christmas" pack from Scrapbook Trends a few days ago. I had a couple of layouts published back in July and got then back along with some beautiful papers. It was a nice surprised as I hadn't seen the magazine yet.

This is one of the layouts that got published.

My son watched the Grufallo film again on Christmas eve. The film is as delightful as the book. Must get more Julia Donaldson books for him.

Playing with punches and July 2010

2010-12-18T22:12:00.001Z

Sometime ago, I saw in a magazine a wall hanging resembling a giant chrysanthemum and got this idea of making a giant flower in a scrapbook page. So I got my circle punches to work. I folded all the circles in half, and printed concentric circles in a paper scrap to help me place the circles the way I wanted.

* Patterned paper: Studio Calico

* Letter stickers: Basic Grey

I am pretty behind in my Project 12 project - this is July. All the photos and journaling were printed in a single A4 page. The template is a freebie from Paislee Press. Templates are the digital equivalent of a sketch, a quick and easy way to put a layout together.

A Personalised Book

2010-12-16T23:00:00.001Z

This is an old project which I think I never shared.

When my daughter was in Junior Infants, her teacher gave to all the children in her class personalised books for Christmas. In each story, the main character had the child's name and somewhere in the story there were bits about them like their ages, best friends, etc.

The booklet was made of A4 pages folder in 4 and stapled together and had the name of a website on it, northpole.com. My daughter loved the book, and a year later, at Christmas time, we found the book and reread it. I got curious and went to the website. It has lots of Christmas related stuff, including personalised stories. To my delight, there were two more stories, and I decided to print one story for my daughter and another for my son.

There were two options on how to print the story too, one for a quick fold&staple A6 book and another option to print the story in A5 size in both sides of the paper. Which gave me the idea to try to make a properly bound book. I found a great tutorial and quickly made the two books. The one I am displaying is my daughter's - it is a bit worn out (being 3 years in a child's bookshelf), but not damaged otherwise.

Sadly the tutorial has been removed, there are other ones for single section bookbinding, but not as detailed as the one I followed. Here's one.

For the cover I used corrugated cardboard covered in patterned paper. It is a Basic Grey pattern, given free with a scrapbook magazine and printed on a thinner, shinier paper then the usual one. That's the part that got worn out. The tutorial said to use fabric for the spine, but since I hadn't any in hand I used handmade paper instead. Handmade paper is both more maleable and stronger than ordinary paper so I figured out it would do. And it did, the spine is still in good condition.

The title page and the first chaper.

Have a go, it would made a great (and unexpensive) present for any child aged 6 or under.

Tons of beautiful drawings & sketches

2010-12-11T17:42:00.000Z

Yes, I have been scrapbooking, but haven't taken any photos. Winter is like that, it is not 5:30pm yet, and it is pitch dark.

Never heard about it before, but there is something called sketchbook project, going for years. I read about in Geninne's Art Blog, check the posted entries, so many amazing artist around the world are taking part/have taken part. Like mashaa, emilayusof, Haifa Malhas, Alinac.

Run!

2010-12-06T22:04:00.000Z

I am pleased with this one, a bit time consuming, but it came out as I envisaged. Another "inspired by" is LO, this time by a layout by Piradee Talvanna in Creating Keepsakes. She had punched out endless rows scalloped borders in craft paper in both ends of a double page layout. The result that was both understated and elegant. Not to mention stunning. I had done something like that before but she just put the whole concept in a new level.

I went with graduating the colours from blue to white.

* Punch: Xcut
* Stamps: Studio Calico
* Ink: Colorbox
* Embossing Powder: Stampendous
* Font: Underwood Champion

Inspiration doesn't mean results

2010-12-02T00:30:00.000Z

Lately I have been feeling like this - I felt inspired, but when I sat down to make something, the results were pretty disappointing. To try to get out of this hole, I decided to change my usual way of doing things:

- I hardly ever scraplift, my inspiration comes either from the photos or what I around me, a dres, ads, interior design magazines, cd covers, etc. So now I'd try to see a layout that spoke to me and scraplift or use as a base for my own. (*)
- Limit my choices. Since I had just purchase a scrapbooking kit (November's Studio Calico kit), I'd try to use it to the max.

I am not so good with rules - I quickly go of on a tangent, but it did help me to have some guidelines, even if it was to break them.

This layout is a scraplift from one by Lisa Truesdell, as seen in the October issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine. I want to start submitting for publication and CK has a running call for layouts inspired by ones featured in their mag.

*patterned paper: Scenic Router (grid), My Mind's Eye
*small tag: Fontwerks
*Circle (behind photo): My Mind's Eye
*Letter Stickers: Making Memories (green), October Afternoon
*Punches: Martha Stewart (lace), Woodware (scalop circle and small circle),
*Flowers: Prima
*Stamp: Studio Calico
*Also: Stickles, sequins, string and thread

It is a close scraplift, besides changing the design from 12x12 to 8.5x11, I didn't stray much from her design. But while hers is stunning, mine is average. Not horrible, but you would'nt pick this one up from a crowd, would you?

Analyzing it, I think I didn't nail the colours right, there's not enough contrast, there's not enough punch. I tried to use lilacs and purples and that never works for me. I wear these colours but have difficulty using them in scrapbook pages and would never thing of using them in the home.

A step in the right direction I think.

From Celtic Tiger to Celtic Meltdown

2010-11-19T21:53:00.000Z

How did it happen?
Sorry for the OT title, but I can't help wondering.

Anyway, here's a suggestion of what to do in lean times.

My daughter got this blouse in Penneys.

It was marked €3, but at the cash desk we found out it had been reduced to €1.

I asked if she'd like if I added a few crochet flowers around the neckline. She said yes.

I'll try to take a photo of her with the blouse, it goes really well with her colouring.

Nice weekend!

Celebration blog hop

2010-11-11T15:00:00.021Z

The Baker Dozen is celebrating its first birthday of being Shimelle Laine's Digital Creative Team with a blog hop.

Today I am celebrating my family - the family I grew up with and the family that my husband and I made.

* Digital Paper: Bazinga! kit by Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket
* Frame: Write it Down Prety Labels by Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket
* Title Letters: A New Leaf by Paislee Press and Audacious Designs
* Font: CK Ali's Hand Official

The next stop in the hop is Rani.

And here are all the Blog Hoppers:

Karen m. http://talesfromthescrapheap.blogspot.com/
Kate http://libertycottage.blogspot.com/
Avital http://www.CreativityPrompt.com
Dolly http://dollysdreamings.typepad.com
Elisa http://hybrid-alien.blogspot.com
Rani http://www.scrapyoga.typepad.com/
Yvonne http://yvonnes-inkyfingers.blogspot.com/
SJ http://www.scrappyfairy.blogspot.com/
Anso http://glitteradventure.blogspot.com/
Nadine http://hello-love.org/
Sheri http://www.auntierere.blogspot.com/

Take a look their fabulous creations!

Halloween - from 2008 to 2010

2010-11-08T22:41:00.000Z

I am convinced that I have only 10% of the stash of an average scrapbooker/paper crafter. All my papers fit in a since shelf. Another shelf for my bigger embellishments, and a few shelves for bits and pieces - so what's on the rest of my lovely shiny white IKEA storage cabinets?

Magazines (tons of them!). Plus "things-that-could-be-useful-sometime-so-I-wont-get-rid-of-them". So I hit on this brilliant idea: why not actually use these things instead of only storing them? I'm a genius, don't you think?

Like this 7 gypsies mini book that is probably 5 years old. Since I had previously made a mini with the Halloween photos up to 2007, this one starts where the other one stopped.

Very simple, most of the digital elements are from Karla Dudley's kit which I won in her blog.

cover

For every year, I wrote a short journaling about the kids' costumes
the opposite side was looking bare so I added 4 tiny photos from the same year

Two photos of each child per year, sometimes with word art or doodles

there's even a photo of the 4 of us, taken by a neighbour while we were trick or treating

TFL!

*Digital elements: Swank Labels by Jennifer Pebbles @ Two Peas in a Bucket (frame), Paper Crave (bat image, not seen), Spook by Karla Dudley @ Design House Digital
*Mini Album: 7 Gypsies

{No} Joy :-)

2010-10-24T20:00:00.015+01:00

Like last year, I'll be giving a customised 2011 calendar to my immediate family this year. Since Photobox had a special offer until last Thursday, I was rushing trying to sort out the photos for the calendar. For December I wanted to have a photo of my two children with the Santa Hat.

That was the plan. I couldn't get a half decent photo of my son, on his own or with his sister. He'd make faces, cover his head with the hat, turn back, etc etc. So I gave up, and let my children take photos of each other and of me.

Digital layout
*Patterned paper: Delovely by Paislee Press @ Oscraps.com
*Frame: Pictures + Words by Paislee Press @ Oscraps.com
*Word Art: Penned Words::Christmas By Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket
*Font: 2 peas Sailboat @ Two Peas in a Bucket

Journaling:

"Trying to get a decent picture of
you for our 2011 calendar is no
fun, No good photos, only outtakes. But at lease we have
some laughs."

Did I get frustrated? Me? Nooo...

Scrapboxes

2010-10-23T21:22:00.000+01:00

I was taken when I saw Darcy Miller's scrapboxes in a article in Martha Stewart Living magazine. I'm sure I'd blogged about it.

With my craft space full of "things-I've-saved-in-the-hope-of-using-it-sometime", I decided it was time to start using or getting rid of them.

Of course, this little bike was way too cute to be thrown out:

If you ever go to Brazil, try to stop in the roadside cafes. Of course, there's a chance you get these yucky places with awful food and unhygienic toilets but mostly you get average to excellent food. As my Dad always say, stop where there's lots of trucks (lorries) - truck drivers know where to find the best roadside barbecue restaurants. But I am side tracking, what I mean to say is that the bigger ones, besides food, sells lots of magazines, newspapers, snacks, and an arrays of curiosities that ranges from bizarre to ugly, cute to amazing. Like this little bike, smaller than the palm of my hand, made of a single wire and bits of green and yellow plastic tubing - plus the Brazilian flag.

Inspired by Darcy Miller, who usually combines a photo with a matching souvenir, I use this photo of my son, taken Christmas Day 2008, on his new bike:

It is a recessed frame bought in IKEA - the glass on it I had broke sometime ago, but it didn't matter because I couldn't have used it anyway, as the bike was too wide to fit inside it.

One frame and one bike used. Now onto the other 100 frames and bits and pieces waiting to be used...

Always Lulu

2010-10-19T23:48:00.001+01:00

* Patterned Paper: Scenic Route
* Ribbon: from a Studio Calico kit
* Journaling spot: Title and Journal Blocks by Ali Edwards @ Designer Digitals

This is another one that needs something. Sorry for the bad photo too.

Ah, yes, I have a tutorial for the pleated flowers in my other blog.

Halloween 2009

2010-10-15T23:42:00.000+01:00

Made a digi LO using Karla Dudley's Spook kit.

I am not 100% happy with it, I feel it is missing something but every time I attempt to add another element, it feels wrong. So here it is, consider it finished.

* Postage Stamp Frames: Mailing Label Frames by Paislee Press @ Oscraps
* Everything else: Spook Kit by Karla Dudley @ Design House Digital

Yippeee! Look at what I won!

2010-10-07T17:22:00.000+01:00

I got this gorgeous Halloween digi kit from Karla Dudley in her new shop at Design House Digital. I am delighted, thank you Karla!

I don't have any excuse now, must scrap last Halloween before this year's arrives.

Day 1

2010-10-05T00:04:00.000+01:00

My son's first day in school. I was a bit aprehensive as he is a bit clingy. If I tell you that he is 5 and so far, everytime we left him with a babysitter he cries a LOT, that will give you an idea. But I shouldn't have. He couldn't contain his excitement and as we waved goodbye in the classroom, he just smiled and wished us a good day at work (to Daddy) and a good day at home (to me).

I don't do much hidden journaling, but since I had a lot to say, I decide to hide the journaling to give a bit of space for patterned paper. I punched a couple of holes so that a few words could be seen and I didn't have to write "lift this".

*Patterned Paper: Studio Calico
*Transparency: Hambly Studios
*Title Letters: American Crafts
*Font: Little Days

June 2010

2010-09-28T13:09:00.001+01:00

Finally got June 2010 summary done. Lots of things to report. My son's birthday, Father's day, visit to EuroDisney, my daughter's finished junior school, and my son's last day in preschool.

I used Shimelle Top Ten Lists. What I like best about them, is that it uses different sizes and fonts, so you can get away using them, even if you only have 8 items in your list - just space them out and it won't be noticeable. Or more than 10.

The sketch is based on one of Becky Fleck's sketches for Project 12 at the Scrapbook and Cards Today.

Leaves in a card

2010-09-24T23:16:00.000+01:00

Found this really cute leaf punch in Cara Craft Supplies and had to use it. It is smaller than I thought it would be but so cute.

(inside)

Stop

2010-08-31T22:44:00.001+01:00

The whole title should be Stop It! It is about my son's somewhat "destructive" tendencies. Not done in malice, more like an irresistible impulse to poke, pull and push anything that is pokable, pullable or pushable if you get my meaning.

To be honest, his latest destruction - our TV - is not typical, it was an accident while playing the Wii, but coming after some other damages, like this laptop of mine that is missing the "esc" key, made me list some of his latest damages.

*Patterned Paper: Studio Calico (green) American Crafts(orange)
*Chipboard letters: Basic Grey
*Punch: Fiskars
*Font: Franklin Gothic Book
*Other: Buttons

Of course, the photo has nothing to do with it. I am usually somewhere when these things happen. I need to install a cctv at home...

Fota

2010-08-27T23:48:00.000+01:00

We went to Fota Wildlife Park while we were in Cork, and we really enjoyed being able to get close to the animals there. Weird to see Brazilian capiravas wandering in the fields in Ireland. Sadly some children (not mine) chased them away before I could take a photo of them.

I love Shimelle's Ornate Frames and was wondering how to use them again when I got this idea of colouring them white. With a bit of drop shadow, they almost look like transparencies.

*Digital Papers: A Retro Summer by Leiko Beck Designs (plain), You are Here by Paislee Press and The Queen of Quirk (patterned)
*Digital Frames: Ornate Frames by Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket
*Alphas: Pink Polka Alphabet by Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket
*Thread: Yarn Swirls #3 by Katie Pertiet @ Designer Digitals (Scrapbook Inspirations Freebie)
*Font: 2Peas Sailboat @ Two Peas in a Bucket

Do you have an iPhone?

2010-08-27T16:44:00.000+01:00

I don't, and I don't need one, since I am the most basic mobile phone user, I hardly ever use it to take photos.

But if I had an iPhone and the Hipstamatic app, I would use the camera all the time. There was an article (about bikes) in Martha Stewart's Living where all the photos were taken with it and I wasn't the only one that loved it, isn't this gorgeous?

(source)

Talking about layering...

2010-08-23T22:12:00.001+01:00

Here's another attempt. I like this one better - one mistake I can see in my previous layout is that I didn't varied much the size of the elements, here I have used 3 flowers in different sizes and texture, but matching in colour. Works better. I think.

I have a box of photos are repeats or else, that never made into the album nor the scrapbook pages. This was one of them. My daughter when she was a toddler, she always loved bathtime.

The background paper is special to me. It is part of a block of papers that I won in a scrapbook competition in Cara Craft Supplies, back in 2005. I spent a whole month working on the layout. It stayed in my dining room table and every evening I'd take a look at it, shift a few elements add another one, until I was happy with it. I am faster now. Not much, but a little bit more :-)

The doily was coloured with watered down mist, another technique from Celine's class, she used fabric but I didn't have anything suitable so I used paper. I still have one layout to finish from her classes.

*Paper: Papers of the World, Claire Fontaine
*Flowers: Scarlet Lime (fabric flower), Prima (green flower), Studio Calico (pink rose and leaves)
*Letter Stickers: October Afternoon
*Chipboard: Heidi Grace Designs
*Mist: Cosmic Shimmer
*Butterfly: LittleSnippets @ Etsy
*Others: lacy ribbon, jute, button, doily, mist

May 2010

2010-08-19T00:22:00.000+01:00

In general I like flat layouts, but sometimes I feel that I am constrained by my inability to layer and cluster elements together. I decided to practice a bit. This is my first not very sucessful attempt, I'll post my next one soon.

The background paper is a digital paper that I "distressed" using brushes and printed on white Bazzil.

*Digital Paper and Tag: A New Leaf by Paislee Press and Audacious Designs @ Oscraps
*Brushes: T9 Dirty Sprays from www.tutorial9.net
*Flowes: Prima
*Flower Centres: SEI
Other: Organza Ribbon, Foam Letters

Howth

2010-08-19T00:03:00.000+01:00

Last weekend we got a call from a friend - would the kids like to go for a boat trip around Howth harbour? They said yes - my intention was to stay inland and take some photos, but I was told I could get much better photos from the boat. He was right.

On the way back, in the car, my husband stopped so that I could take some more photos, there was a light mist, giving the whole scene a washed out watercolour-like feel. I played with some of the Pioneer Woman's actions for PSE, to make it look like an old photo.

The Girls

2010-08-17T18:48:00.000+01:00

In July I went with the children to a friend's place in Portugal - two mums and 4 children - the poor dads stayed back in Ireland working, though I claim that spending a week without children is a sort of holiday even if you have to go to the office 9-5 :-)

I made a quick digital layout, using Shimelle's newest kit, with a photo of one of the boys took of us:

*Digital Template: Instant Pretty Page Template by Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket
*Digital Papers and Embellishments: Bazinga! by Shimelle Laine@ Two Peas in a Bucket (damask paper), Delovely by Paislee Press @ Oscraps (everything else)
*Title: Wynken, Blynken and Nod by Katie Pertiet @ Designer Digitals

A butterfly card

2010-08-12T18:19:00.000+01:00

One of the beauties of digital kits is that you can change colours to suit your mood. The original butterfly in the Bazinga kit was blue, and I changed it to black and coloured it. The paper is also from the same kit - I love Bazinga.

The word art is from Nini, she has gorgeous word art kit downloadable from her blog. Thank you Nini!

*Paper and Butterfly: Bazinga! by Shimelle Laine at Two Peas in a Bucket
*Word Art: Bits of Life by Suddenly Artistic
*Punch: XCut
*Also: clear gems.

Finally a card

2010-08-06T22:19:00.000+01:00

I have been slow to craft and even slower to post since the summer holidays started.

Here's a layout I've done a few weeks ago. The layout is based on this layout/sketch from the Studio Calico blog.

* Letters: K&Co (wordgrain), Making Memories (small, black)
*Chipboard buttons:Jenni Bowlin
*Font: VT Portable Remington
*Roller Stamp: Glitz Designs

I am the sort of person who finds almost impossible to throw stuff out. It is mostly a curse, but sometimes it pays off - after I stuck the photo, title and buttons I felt something was missing in the background, but what could I do without having to rip the whole layout apart? Then I found this roller stamp which came in a kit, perfect to add a little more interest in this mostly white layout.

Celine used image transfer in one of her classes, which used a image printed with a laser printer. Since my printers are both inkjet, I had to adapt the technique. I printed the image in photo paper, applied a medium gel and transferred the pic to Bazzil cardstock. As you can see, it didn't work that well, there's a few annoying missing bits on my son's face. Later, Carrie explained to me where I went wrong. In fact she has a tutorial in her blog, so next time I'll know how to do it properly, thanks Carrie.

By the way, do you know to find something in a site using google? That's what I typed in google:

site:http://madebycaroline.blogspot.com/ image transfer tutorial

The "site:" directive makes google look for the keywords only in the site you specified ;-)

Summer time and kids

2010-07-23T00:10:00.000+01:00

Today we decided to go to Sealife in Bray. Just a - longish - trip y DART, 5 minutes walk and there we would be. I even had some Tesco tokens so the tickets wouldn't cost a cent.

There was only a little snag - my son wouldn't get inside. I tried everything, enticing "Don't you want to see Nemo?", begging "Please please", bribing "I buy you a ton of sweets", negociating "Look at the first 4 fishes and tell me if you like or not", lying "No, it is not dark in there, really". Nothing worked, he doesn't like dark places and that's it. We sat on the outside for about 30 minutes and he was going hysterical just at the idea (no, I wasn't dragging him or anything, just talking) and at the end we just had to give up. Luckily, there was also a fun fair there, but guess what, he wouldn't go in any rides either. But at least my daughter went in one and they got a teddy each in one of the stalls so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

Adding this to the typical Irish weather - and this year hasn't been too bad - maybe it is better to stay at home. I found two fun projects this evening:

Balancing Butterflies, found in Childhood Magic, via Davinie Fiero's blog.

Marshmallow faces, in Color me Katie:

I am sure I saw some markers for colouring food somewhere - perhaps in Tesco's?!!!

Workshop #8 - Without getting my hands dirty

2010-07-19T23:33:00.000+01:00

Celine's workshop finished with the end of the World Cup but I am way behind. Workshop #8 had to do with using masks and mists. I am short on both, I only have one mist and not a single proper mask. Do I tried the technique using digital tools.

Playing with virtual paint is still fun, thanks to a great set of paint spray Photoshop brushes.

* Photo frame: Swank Labels by Jennifer Pebbles @ Two Peas in a Bucket
* Masks: Color by World by Rhonna Farrer @ Two Peas in a Bucket (floral), Elisa (moon and stars)
* Brushes: T9 Dirty Sprays by David Legget @ Tutorial9.net* Title letters: Bazinga! by Shimelle Laine at Two Peas in a Bucket

* Patterned Paper: You are Here by Paislee Press and The Queen of Quirk @ Oscraps (modified, barely seen)
*Font: Calibri

Ms Lazy bones

2010-07-16T23:49:00.001+01:00

That's me. I came back from holidays feeling reenergized and ready to be creative. But somehow, I haven't done anything so far. Hopefully tomorrow... For the time being, I'll show you some of my favourite photos.

This is an oldish one, taken after the official communion photo. After my daughter came back from school, I managed to convince them to stand outside, against the house's outside wall for a photo shoot. A bit awkward, as the space is very narrow and I actually had to stand on my neighbour's front garden - but, hey, the light was good there.

My daughter persuaded his brother to smile and decided on the pose, she's the ideal photography helper - she's got much more imagination that I have.

Probably the only photo that makes me happy from our recent holiday. It turned out nice in b&w, even if the focus was in the top of the ring instead of his eyes.

One thing I would like to learn is how to find that perfect spot that has the perfect light, that makes everything, even the most ordinary thing look interesting. I know it won't be to everybody's taste (almost nobody's says you :-) ) but I like the one below.

To me, it is about the colours, the green, red and yellow and the tiny bit of blue in her nails. I love it!

This was taken in the DART. Actually the DART is a place for potencially good photos, after all there is shade inside a train and lots of light coming from all the windows. I am not mad about the green seat, but otherwise it beats any spot in my house in terms of light.

Photography and a new kit

2010-07-03T00:21:00.000+01:00

I've posted this photo before, it was inspired by photographers like Andrea Joki and Stephanie Lynn. They posted in the IPL forum, showing that if you look around, you can find great spots in the most common places.

I use Shimelle's new kit, Bazinga! I admit I didn't know what bazinga meant, S-J, a fellow CT member, clarified:

Bazinga - is a word you shout when you have pulled off something funny - or wild..
If you watch -The Big Bang Theory- comedy show - it is Sheldon Coopers catch phrase!

*Papers and Alpha: Bazinga! by Shimelle Laine at Two Peas in a Bucket
*Journaling Tag: Travel Journal Worksheet by Shimelle Laine at Two Peas in a Bucket
*Font: VT Portable Remington

Workshop #4 - Masking tape

2010-06-30T21:25:00.000+01:00

Yey, I got published here:

I got my copy in the post today, I was delighted to see my layout and more because it is full of inspirations, tons of layouts and inspirational ideas.

I am a bit behind Celine's classes as I went away on holidays. I was half hoping to get two projects done yesterday, but only got one, 3 tries and a couple of cardstock papers on the bin, I came up with this:

*Patterned Paper: Studio Calico
*Chipboard: Sassafrass (5), American Crafts (brackets)
*Stamps: Studio Calico (big 5), others unknown
*Also: Masking tape, acrylic paint, ink

The photo is bad, and the design is only lacking something, but I really enjoyed the masking technique - Celine did that in the class in Dublin, this time she advised to paint over it. I went a step further and stamped on it too. Loved it, and will definitely try to do this again.

Workshop #3 - World Cup Class (2nd layout)

2010-06-23T23:12:00.000+01:00

In the previous layout I didn't use the technique that Celine taught, but I really had to have a go. Playing with corrugated cardboard, gesso and mists can be unpredictable but it was great fun.

http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1836074878403944916

*Patterned Paper: Lily Bee
*Punch: XCut
*Mist: Cosmic Shimmer Mist
*Also: corrugated cardboard, transparency,embossing powder, gesso, acrylic paint

The white leaf shapes are not there, they're a reflection on the transparency. I printed and embossed the circles in transparency and layered it over the cardboard. I quite like the leaves thought, I might add them later.

Workshop #3 - World Cup Class

2010-06-22T11:30:00.001+01:00

Based on Celine's sketch and colour scheme (plus a bit of purple).

*Patterned Paper: Crate Paper (circles), Pink Paislee (scraps)
*Fonts: Cooper Black (title) VT Portable Remington (journaling)
*Other: thread and punch

Most of the time I'd rather write my own imperfect journaling than quote someone else, but in this case, everything I wrote sounded very lame, so I borrowed this from an unknown person. Thank you Unknown!

This is my wish for you: Comfort on difficult days, smiles when sadness intrudes, rainbows to follow the clouds, laughter to kiss your lips, sunsets to warm your heart, hugs when spirits sag, beauty for your eyes to see, friendships to brighten your being, faith so that you can believe, confidence for when you doubt, courage to know yourself, patience to accept the truth, love to complete your life.

Happy Father's Day

2010-06-20T18:00:00.000+01:00

Happy Father's Day to all Daddies - not that I think any read my blog, hehehe.

With all the excitement yesterday ( it was my son's Birthday party) my daughter forgot to make a card from her to her Daddy, so I made an almost duplicate of the one from my son, using Shimelle template for the 3rd time!

*Template and letters: You Are Amazing by Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket
*Papers: Springtime Basics by Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket (blue paper) A Retro Summer by Leiko Beck Designs (all others)

Fully digital, which I printed and stuck into a card. Easy peasy!

Worshop #2 from the World Cup class

2010-06-19T19:36:00.000+01:00

Doing a bit better, now - for once the layout turned out as I wished. I used the sketch, but not the colour scheme or the technique. Celine mentioned that she used an old, forgotten Basic Grey paper, and it turns out, I also and an old BG which was perfect for this layout.

*Patterned Paper: Basic Grey
*Letter Stickers and Felt Ric-rac: American Crafts
*Punch: Martha Stewart
*Stamp: Studio Calico

The kraft paper is folded over and secured with a magnet, I mean to write something for my daughter inside the kaft paper.

It goes with two challenges: Studio Calico's "Be Bold" and PaperPlay's "Something Old".

Maybe a toot toot? and Understanding Girls

2010-06-17T22:33:00.002+01:00

If you got the Scrapbook Inspirations Idea Book #2, would you be able to tell me if there is a layout of mine there? I got one layout accepted for it, but I know from experience that sometimes they don't get published. Ta.

Now, back to Celine's workshop.

Thanks to a high maintenance older sister, my son probably knows much more about how a girl's mind works than the average boy his age.

I had this LO in digital form for a while, and a added a little bit of salmon pink to fit the colour scheme in Celine's workshop #1. More my usual style, I like this one better but maybe I should be more adventurous?

* Patterned Paper: October Afternoon (blue), American Crafts (orange)
* Letter Stickers: American Crafts (pink), unknown (small b&w)
* Chipboard: Heidi Swapp
* Font: Century Gothic

Journaling:

"There are certainly disadvantages in having an older sister. Like being bossed around all your life. An unexpected advantage is that you get to know how a girl’s mind works. Which, bellieve me, will come handy in the future. That’s what you learned so far.

1. Girls and fashion
Whenever you sister asks if you like her clothes, you - who don’t have interest in the subject - say in your most earnest voice: “Yess!!!”. Perfect! If I’lll tell you that the answer to “Does my butt look big on this” is alway NO, you’lll know everything you need to know about this subject.

2. Girls and talk
Lucy kept on phoning you from my parents hotel room to our room. You answered and politely listened every time. Then one time, I heard you giggling. I went to see what was up - you had the handset away from your ear and was laughing and laughing. You looked at me and said “She talks and talks and I am not listening!”. That what all men do, babes!"

I always find spelling mistakes after I print the journaling - "bellieve" - what was I thinking? There's probably lots more - I am not sure if I want to know...

Father's Day Card

2010-06-12T23:02:00.001+01:00

2nd post of the day!

Here's my son's Father's Day card - it's digital, I am going to print it, of course. I used the template for a card instead of a layout.

*Template and letters: You Are Amazing by Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket
*Papers: Springtime Basics by Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket (ledger), Full Circle by Danielle Young (all others)

Getting my fingers dirty

2010-06-12T20:37:00.000+01:00

Yesterday the World Cup started and so did Celine's classes. The first workshop involved a colour schemme, a sketch and a technique (embossing).

I combined the three in a single layout:

*Buttons and Stamp: Studio Calico
*Ribbon and Light Pink and Brown Flowers: American Crafts
*Rubbon: Daisy D's
*Punch: Martha Stewart
*Chipboard Letters: Basic Grey*Mist: Cosmic Shimmer Mist
*Other: Tissue paper, thread, stamping ink, distressing ink, black ink

I figured there's no point in doing a class if I kept doing exactly the same as I always do. I didn't go out of my way to be different, but I experimented more that I usually do. The final result is so and so, I am not mad about it, but I am OK with it. What worked was printing in patterned paper (photo on the right) like Celine did - it doesn't show well in the photo but I like it. The other thing was using the bits & pieces of paper that I save but hardly use - like tissue paper and the lining of a chocolate box.

Celine's Scrap World Cup Class

2010-06-11T22:04:00.000+01:00

I'm doing Celine's class. It is 4 weeks long, and started today. Have I done anything so far? No, it only started a few hours ago? Why am I posting then?

Because I am afraid I read the classes and don't make a single LO or project - I am hoping that broadcasting it will shame me into producing at least one work per week - watch this space...

Two styles

2010-06-10T22:26:00.000+01:00

If I had to describe my style in a few words, I would go for clean & simple. However there's a range in the simplicity, and sometimes I like to go minimal and sometimes I try to be a bit more adventurous and messy.

Like here:

* Patterned Paper: Lily Bee Whimsy

* Rhinestones: Kaiser Craft
* Other: lacy ribbon (stamped), thread, masking tape, patterned adhesive tape, leather heart, acrylic paint,
* Fonts: CK Ali's Hand Official (date),Unknown (quote)

The small print reads:

"Luke, 17th April 2010.
Still keeping his promise, 3rd June 2010"

The problem is that I am a bit disaster prone, so there's lots of smudges that weren't suposed to be there, including a big one that I covered with the leather heart which came with a handbag.

The best bit is the lacy ribbon "stamp". I place the ribbon over a scrap of paper, brushed it with acrylic paint. Then I carefully placed the ribbon over my layout, covered with a clean paper scrap and I rubbed it with my fingers. Then I carefully removed the paper and the ribbon and there it was a clear lace imprint. It worked better in cardstock than over masking tape.

The next one is a hybrid layout - I designed and printed the whole layout in PSE & PSP. To add a bit of interest, I machine stitched over the green border. Then I printed the photos and the leaves again in photo paper, cut it out and glued to the original layout.

And stamped the title.

*Frame, patterned paper and leaves: Newleaf by Paislee Press and Audacions Designs
*Stamps: Storytime by Studio Calico (alpha and numbers)

First Communion Layout

2010-06-05T00:25:00.000+01:00

I am sure my daughter would complain about my photo choice - she doesn't like this one very much, she prefers the formal photos, taken on the day of the first communion of by the official photographer. But this one is the one that talks to me - pure joy.

* Patterned Paper: Vintage Patchwork (Girls Paperie)
* Alpha: Oliver Chipboard Alphabet (Making Memories)
* Also buttons, tracing paper, ribbon & cardstock

The flowers are based on this tutorial by Joy Madison in the Studio Calico blog, I love that the flowers are dimension without being bulky. There's another great flower tutorial here, but Waleska Neris.

Digital card using a template

2010-06-01T23:38:00.000+01:00

My first layout of the month, for Shimelle's Creative Team, the Baker's Dozen.

*Template and Letters: You Are Amazing by Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket
*Papers: Delovely by Paislee Press @ Oscraps (tree), Springtime Basics by Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket (all others).

Made a card...

2010-05-26T21:36:00.000+01:00

A quick digi card:

* Digital Papers: Springtime Basics by Shimelle Laine@ Two Peas in a Bucket

* Heart strips: Can't Buy Me Love by Shimelle Laine@ Two Peas in a Bucket
* Alpha: Count to Four Page Template and Alphabet by Shimelle Laine@ Two Peas in a Bucket
* Tape frame: Washi Tape Frames Digital Kit by Danielle Thompson

* Stitches: Spring Breeze by Shabby Princess
* Image: Lucy with Balloons @ Mami Doodles

Dandelions

2010-05-24T23:17:00.000+01:00

If you have a garden, you know that dandelions are a pain. But at this time of the year they're are beautiful - as long as they're not growing in your garden, that is...

I was eyeing a bit of overgrown patch close to where I live, but when I finally dragged the kids to play, the dandelions were gone, someone finally decided to mow the lawn. But hidden in St Anne's Park I found a little bit of dandelion heaven.

Shimelle's new template

2010-05-19T23:11:00.002+01:00

I'm trying to catch up now, as I haven't been scraping much this week.

It is digital layout, using Shimelle Laine's new template + alpha:

*Template and Alpha (recoloured): Count to Four Page Template and Alphabet by Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket
*Patterned Paper and Embelishments: Delovely by Paislee Press @ Oscraps
*Doodled Frame: Web Inspired Brushes by Katie Pertiet @ Designer Digitals
*Font: CK Ali's Hand Official

If you never used templates why don't you have a go? It is a great way to make a super quick layout - and at the same time, you can customise it to you liking as much as you want.

Photos, Primas and a Layout

2010-05-16T22:53:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was my daughter's First Communion - it was a beautiful ceremony and my daughter was beautiful - I took hundreds of bad photos and a few that made me happy. One of my favourites is already printed for the cover of the thank you cards. And I handed the camera to my friends so I am not the invisible mum - I was there and I can prove it!

Today, after mass, I dragged my daughter to a couple of spots where I thought I could take some more pics, I wanted her sitting in a field of daisies. Looking at them now, I realised I should have taken a few steps back to have more of the daisies in the photos.

She wasn't wearing a veil on the day, but she wanted one today.

This is a silly one, but I like it.

When it came to decorating the house for the party, of course I left it to late and there weren't any themed decoration for sale anymore. So I had to improvise.

I bought some cute banners in Carraig Donn:

Some oversized Prima flowers, spotty candle from Meadows & Byrne, pink sweets covered in icing from Tesco's. The sprinkles are some Barbie sprinkles - not very nice to eat but really pretty.

I got some balloons from Woodies, plain ones, as the 1st communion ones were sold out, of course!

I've ordered part of the food, cooked part, my sister and law made her fabulous curried coleslaw, and my dear friend and my daughter's godmother made some absolutely yummy desserts. The wonkly looking ones were made by me, and the professional looking (and tasting) ones are her work.

She - He

2010-05-15T22:43:00.000+01:00

Since even biological siblings are often very different, I should perhaps not be so surprised that my children, who were adopted, are poles aparts in terms of personality and likes and dislikes.

Still, wouldn't you think that since they live in the same house and are being raised by the same set of parents they would have a lot of similarities? Not so, it wasn't the case when they were babies and it is still not. Thankfully though, they are friends, love each other and play together very well. That is when they are not fighting, he he he.

I took two similar photos of them, just changing the focus from one child to the other. It was just a little experimentation - I still think it looks a bit weird when the subject in front is out of focus - but when I looked at both of them it occurred to me that I could use each photo to write something about the child that is in focus. Sorry about the bad photo...

she

is a girl
barefooted and in T-shirts in winter
loves to try new foods
loves to travel
is a bit self conscious
is a bit serious
writes stories
dance mad
can't wait to grow up

is a boy
socks & long sleeves in summer
will eat the same food everyday
loves his home
doesn't worry
is too funny
won't hold a pencil
technology mad
wants to be a baby forever

A few months after we adopted my son, I made a layout about their differences as babies.

It is a pity that my son is now much more shy then when he was a baby, but otherwise, I can see that their personalities remained the same since then!

Did you notice that my daughter has two teeth at the top and my son at the bottom?

TFL!

My last PaperPlay

2010-05-06T23:35:00.001+01:00

I reluctantly resigned from the PaperPlay DT.
I loved and still do the challenges and the company, but I just don't have the time to do justice to the challenge at the moment. Thank you to all the DT girls!

Here's my last one:

The challenge was to use a digi image and bling, set by Liz. Sponsored by Stitchy Bears Stamps:

Since I didn't post every one of my projects, here are some of my favourite PaperPlay Challenge entries:

Medal holder for my daughter.

Decorative frame using a photo of my son

Playing with buttons...

For my son's bedroom

Mini book using chipboard tags (inspired by Tina Azmus for Studio Calico)